Bill Condon Talks Spider Women, Fred Astaire, and the Politics of Old Hollywood Musicals
"This was really one of the very few unmade musicals that was screaming out to be a movie."

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Director Bill Condon is an Old Hollywood nerd like me. The director/screenwriter is the man behind the likes of Chicago (2002), the James Whales quasi-biopic Gods and Monsters (1998) and even a 2003 remake of 1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster called The Shortcut to Happiness. Condon calls that one "a troubled film" during our interview. Condon's latest is Kiss of the Spider Woman, an adaptation of the Broadway musical, itself an adaptation of the 1985 Hector Babenco movie and the 1976 Manuel Puig novel.